Greece

Had our 4 days on Paros. 2 perfect days with beautiful calm water, a little cooler than we hoped, but still managed a few swims. Next couple of days blew up, so not so great. The morning we sailed back to Athens it was calm again so we left with the same beautiful images as we had on arrival.
Stayed another 2 nights in Athens. Spent one day using our all day metro pass, jumping on and off random stations, we  found a couple more impresssive ruins we had missed previously.
Took a bit of sorting out to try and organise our bus travel to Thessaloniki. Several false attempts to find bus agencies, then when we did, they couldn't sell us the tickets! Had to buy them at the actual station just before we left.
2 days in Thessaloniki, it's a lovely  city, and the food is superb. We had read that it was a great melting pot of tastes / cuisines, and that was spot on.  There is also great competition for your custom between the restaurants so we found ourselves with free wine and dessert each night, not that we really needed dessert..... Tonight we were serenaded with Zorba the Greek amongst other traditional sounding Greek music. It made you want to start smashing plates!
On a bus to Skopje, Macedonia romorrow.

Greece

Caught a 'real' bus for a change, approx. 8 hour trip from Sarande to Athens.... turned into an 11 hour epic, but that included about 2 hours or so at the exit Albania, enter Greece border. We lost 2 of our passengers there.
Did one of our 1 day tourist blasts around Athens. Not too bad for crowds, way less than Rome.  We are starting to get 'ruin fatigue' after the number of old sites we have seen in various places on our travels so far, however, that said, you can't help but be impressed by all the sites, especially things like the Acropolis /Parthenon, probably because of the familarity of those images. You get a good view over the 'new' Athens from up there as well.

Next morning we were on the ferry to Paros, about 4 hours ferry ride from Piraeus. The incredible blue seas that you see in images of the Greek Islands actually are real!  Really gorgeous deep blue. We are booked into an apartment for 4 nights. Water is still a bit cool, but swimable. Living the dream...

Berat and Sarande- Albania

Another furgon trip. This time to Berat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They are trying to preserve the Ottoman style houses, white walls, tiled rooves. Decided we could probably see what we wanted to in one afternoon, it is a small town.  Took some photos of the typical houses, then walked up to the castle, approximately 1 km straight up! Had to watch your feet all the time as the road is all uneven limestone and slate rock.  There is still a small community living within the old castle walls. An amazing old, but derelict mosque, must have been impressive in its day. A bit more of a wander to look back at the town from the other side of the river and that was about it. Early start to Sarande the next morning.
Yet another furgon trip, but this time 6 hours (!) and incredibly the roads were worse than our previous trips. I had quite a bit of time to look back over our Albanian experiences and made a few notes on quirks and foibles of the country:
Furgons- a great system, they seem to start off with just 2 or 3 people, then random stops to pick up parcels and people along the way, and they are full in no time. The odd box that 'clucks' when people get on. Not sure about WOF's. Informal ticket pricing.
People in the fields - still very manual labour. Hand scything the grass for hay, then raking it up into heaps and bundling it when dry.  Rows of market gardens being manually hoed.  Donkeys struggling along with huge loads of hay and other produce.
Roading - sometimes seems like one giant pothole ocasionally connected by some seal! Not all like that, but a high percentage of time is spent zig zagging around all the holes and bumps. Not unusual to see cars approaching on your side of the road, only to weave back at the last moment after dodging a hole.
I was trying to think of a road back home to compare it to and the closest I could think of was from Pataua South gate over the sandy road to Frogtown, except the roads I'm talking about here are state highways that have been sealed, not unsealed beach roads.  There is an election coming up soon so apparently that means there should be a few roading projects completed soon. Roads close in to the bigger towns are usually okay.
Apparently unfinished houses as you drive along.  Pieces of steel sticking out of a flat roof and 1 or 2 storeys of building.  There is often a stuffed toy hanging off the steelwork and sometimes a bunch of garlic as well... I've read that they build them a storey at a time as they can afford it, and the stuffed toys are meant to be a good luck charm, I guess the garlic is just for good measure.
Supposedly the poorest country in Europe, but every second car is a Mercedes or similar(not exaggerating!)This probably reflects the flood of cars that came in from Italy and Germany after communist rule finished, but still seems rather incongruous to see so many M Benz, BMW's and VW sedans being driven when there is so much subsistence living.

Anyway, we survived the 6 hour trip with one food / toilet stop, and then another stop at a waterfall so everyone could fill their bottles with lovely cold fresh water out of a pottery spout on the side of the road.

Sarande appears to be trying to turn itself into the Albanian Riviera.  There is just a mind boggling number of hotels and apartments in the throes of construction, to add to the hillsides of them that are already there. Not sure who is investing all the money in the development (my guess is Russians, they have been buying up the coast in Montenegro so maybe are carrying on down here too), but you have to wonder how it will all be sustained, or whether the bubble will burst and leave a lot of people out of pocket. Looking at some of the construction sites as we wander around,  there isn't a lot of health and safety awareness round these parts and sometimes you wonder if some of the buildings are going to stay upright.  In fact after speculating about this on the first day we were here, we did drive past several partially constructed apartments / hotels (?) that had fallen sideways or imploded somehow, so our speculation was unfortunately close to the mark.
Caught the bus to Butrint, another World Heritage site 18 kms from Sarande. They only started excavating in the late 1920's, but there are an amazing number of Greek, Roman and Ottoman ruins from tne 4th century BC onwards which are really accessible and visitor friendly. We wound up with heaps of photos, you couldn't resist snapping them continually. I think we struck it lucky on our visit, only saw about four other couples in the time we were wanderig around.  Today, Saturday, we have seen several tour buses heading that way.

We have changed our plans a little and are now heading down to Athens, Sparta, and out to a Greek island for a few days.  Then we will head back up and carry on with Macedonia, Turkey etc.

Albania

Well the 1 1/2 hour bus trip from Ulcinj to Skhodra ended up taking about 3 hours. We are discovering that border crossings can be quite time consuming, especially when you are on a bus.
You certainly know that you have entered a different country when you hit Albania. Our first impressions of Skhodra were, grey weathered looking buildings and an air of poverty / neglect everywhere.  Our hotel was great in the entrance and reception, but as you went up a couple of floors things started to deteriorate. Only stayed 1 night, used it as a stopover before our trip to Tirana - capital of Albania.
The trip to Tirana was quite an experience. We ended up in one of the local transport alternatives, a 'furgon' or minibus.  Not sure whether they have to pass a wof or not, if they do they must get it from a backstreet somewhere.  That aside though, they got us there safely which is saying a lot when you see the state of the roads. A roading engineer's worst nightmare! 
We read in one of the tourist blurbs that "you could count Tirana's attractions on one finger". That is a little harsh, but not a lot of 'must sees'. This is all sounding a bit negative, but actually we enjoyed wandering around the city, getting lost, finding ourselves in a street market, then out and around in a big circle back to our hotel. Amongst all that, and after several lots of directions to various places, we managed to find an ear specialist to 'unblock' Dave's ears. Now I don't have to repeat everything twice.
Tirana's main claim to fame is the amazing paintwork on a lot of the apartment blocks. The mayor who was elected in 2000, who was an art major from Paris, decided he needed to do something about the 'greyness' of the post-Soviet era so he made it a project to liven up the buildings.  See some of our photos....
The National Museum was really interesting. It went from the Stone Age, to the end of the 2nd WW. We noticed that nothing was mentioned, or displayed, about the communist era. Also saw a statue of Mother Teresa, not sure of her relevance to Tirana, as she was Macedonian...
Had some lovely authentic Albanian meals here too. Lambs liver seems to be popular here,  but they do it well.

Montenegro - Denovici and Ulcinj

Stopped in Denovici for our 8 day relaxing break, but we got fidgety and decided to only make it a 6 day stay. First couple of days were pretty slow, Denovici is a quiet little spot on the harbour at the moment, we just strolled the waterfront and took it easy. Next day instead of resting we hired bikes and cycled between the little towns around the bay,  ended up being a round trip of about 32 kms.  Came across some rock paintings from 8th century BC and some Roman Mosaics from 2nd century AD in our travels. So much for relaxing! Saddle sore and tired, but slept well that night. Treated ourselves to a massage the next afternoon.
Moved down the country a bit to Ulcinj.  A bit bigger town and our apartment is up quite a steep hill, so a few stops to 'admire the view' each time we head back from town.  The old town was badly affected by an earthquake in 1979 so a lot of rebuilding /renewal has been done since then. Now it seems to be mostly restaurants and a large hotel, a little disappointing.
Another night here, then we move to Albania on Sunday...

(In case you get confused by the photo sequence in relation to the blog posts, sorry, but despite me adding them in the same order as I mention topics in our blog, when the blog is published they seem to fall into their own random order!)

Dubrovnik

Had an interesting time trying to leave Candela. Waited an hour and a half in the sun for a bus that never arrived, even though we bought tickets for it earlier the same morning. Finally went back to our B&B and the hosts drove us down to another bus station where we managed to catch a bus to take us to Foggia and then we caught the train to Bari.
More fun and games in Bari trying to get our ferry tickets to Dubrovnik. It involved shuttle buses from the port to a ticket office 5 minutes up the road, only to discover the office didn't open for another 1 1/2 hours! Fortuntely there was a bar cafe handily positioned nearby (someone had obviously spotted the opportunity). Mission finally accomplished and we shuttled back to the port. Night sailing at 10pm and arrived in Dubrovnik 7am. A smooth crossing and Dubrovnik was calm and beautiful when we arrived. We were met by our host and shown to our apartment. Small, but adequate for the 2 days. Had a lazy afternoon / evening.
Caught bus over the hill to 'Old Dubrovnik' this morning.  We are here supposedly on the shoulder of the season, we can't imagine what it must be like at the peak.  The place was absolutely heaving with tour groups and people off cruise ships. (Currently 3 in port!). Hard to believe there has so recently been war waged in this area, and also how anyone could launch such attacks destroying beautiful historic buildings. Off to Montenegro tomorrow... (one of the attackers of Dubrovnik).